An embarrassing trip down memory lane...
Caution: Old art inside!
Hi there!
Let's take a trip back to the 90's and 2000's!
I’m almost done fulfilling all the Buddy and Friend #3 rewards (just four more sketch covers to go!) and I have a post-Kickstarter-ritual that involves cleaning up my workspace once I've shipping is almost complete. It's so satisfying to tidy up after literally tripping over boxes of books, stickers and shipping boxes. Yes, boxes full of boxes. Boxception.
While I was mid-ritual, yesterday, I got derailed by looking through some of my ancient art from almost 20 years ago. I honestly still can’t believe I’ve held onto anything for that long! Drawings, ideas, emotional baggage… *sob*.
On the left is my high-school-era Khajad, on the right high-school-era Siphram. It's wild to think how far they've come and how much they changed over the years. You could tell by Siphram's weird sword thing that I was super into Final Fantasy 7 at the time. It's a good thing I opted to just make it an actual spear because that is some seriously comedic edgelord stuff right there.
Although, admittedly, sometimes I feel in the mood to do some sort of super edgy super edgelord comic with ridiculous swords and outlandish armor and batshit crazy character designs featuring thousands of belts, but that’s future me’s problem…
Both characters have gone through some drastic cosmetic changes, the most noticeable being the skin color change.
Ever since I started drawing, I’ve had an aversion to drawing dark skinned characters so ALL of my characters were light skinned. Why? Because, as a brown person myself, anytime I took out the brown colored pencil/crayon/marker/paint to color ANY character, stupid bystanders would ask me “OMG R U DOING A SELF PORTRAIT!? IS THAT U!!?? IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE U!! U DON'T HAVE WINGS” so… I just made everyone light skinned. It was just easier that way. And no one ever questioned it.
I honestly don't know why people are so obsessed with the idea of artists doing self portraits. Just because so many famous artists have done self portraits doesn't mean everyone wants to. There are even people who've went out of their way to tell me that every picture an artist draws looks exactly like the artist whether the artist knows I’ll leave that up to you to decide…
Here’s the thing and I guess a weird tangent: I compartmentalize really well. My story things are just story things and that’s that. I’ve never dreamt of being a fantasy character in a fantasy world with wings and magical powers going on epic adventures because that shit seems stressful as fuck. Truth be told, I’ve never even had any dreams about my characters or being in their world or anything of the sort. Story is story and real life is real life (and also extremely stressful!).
But also if I got sucked into a fantasy world/game I’d really just opt to be that weird NPC blacksmith or something that makes weapons and armor for the *real* heroes like “Okay guys! You got this! You go fuck up some dragons now!” I ain’t fighting no fucking dragons. Nope.
Anyway, It probably wasn’t until 2010 or so when I finally stopped caring about people claiming I was self-inserting and I started unashamedly making brown characters. Every now and then I'll get the occasional stupid comment about my brown characters being inaccurate representations of me or whatever but stupid people are going to stupid and there's nothing I can do.
Aside from their looks changing, their stories ended up changing for the better, too.
Ancient Khajad was the literal devil who lived in hell and did... whatever(???) without any consequences while ancient Siphram was a… fallen angel who was banished from heaven and doomed to walk the mortal realm. Okay so that much didn’t change about Siphram, aside from the context. He was kind of crazy. Like irrational Joker-type crazy instead of a gloomy asshole with PTSD and the personality of a bag of broken glass.
I'm so glad I grew out of these old versions of both characters. The story has absolutely changed for the better. I can't even imagine what the story would be like if I kept these crazy edgy bastards around all these years. It was definitely hard to let go of them and part of the reason why it took me so long to actually start producing the Sacrimony you see now.
If you told 20something-years-ago-me that I would actually end up turning my ideas into a physical, tangible book series, I’d have never believed it. It’s been a crazy journey and I’m so glad you’re a part of it.
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
PPS: I’m also still up for doing comic cover commissions! I’d love to be able to get in two more covers before the year is done and before my prices go up next year. Even if I’ve done a cover for you for a previous book, I’d love to do another one for a future book ;)
If you’re interested, you can DM me on social media (@mattasorcier on bluesky and insta) or Facebook or just email me at msorcier@sacrimony.com. Don’t be shy!
Oh, the classic high school OC inspired by Final Fantasy. I was just on a FF kick the other day remember some of the ones I played back then. I wasn't very good at them though.